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Administration officials said Wednesday that President Obama is considering using military helicopters and other aircraft to help rescue thousands of refugees trapped on Mt. Sinjar in northwest Iraq, potentially putting U.S. forces closer to the extremist fighters who have laid siege to the area.

Later in the day, however, the Pentagon said a team of its military personnel had determined that there were fewer Yazidi refugees on the mountain than feared and that they were in better shape than previously believed, making an evacuation mission “far less likely.”

The Defense Department said earlier that it sent tilt-rotor cargo aircraft and helicopters to a “secure airfield” to northern Iraq as Obama weighs the operation.

The president has not yet made a decision on how to proceed, Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security advisor, said earlier Wednesday.

“There are a variety of ways we can support the safe removal of those people on the mountain,” Rhodes told reporters in Edgartown, Mass., near where the president is vacationing.

Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that V-22 aircraft, which can land and take off like helicopters, were positioned near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil with a team of 130 Marines and special operations troops who are assessing how to get the refugees out safely.

“The purpose of this team is to assess other options” beyond airdrops of food, water and other supplies to the refugees, he said. “There’s no question that speed is of the essence.”

Rhodes said an airlift to rescue the refugees was likely to be considered, as was a military operation to create a protected ground corridor to lead the refugee to a “safe space.”

He said the president will keep his promise not to return “ground forces into combat” in Iraq. However, he acknowledged that even a humanitarian mission in the area carries risks.

“There are dangers involved in any military operation … but [the president’s] confident that we can have a limited military objective,” Rhodes said.

The U.S. has conducted seven airdrops of food and water to stranded Yazidis, members of a religious minority who sought safety on Mt. Sinjar as Islamic State militants seized control of communities in northern Iraq.

Estimates vary widely, from several thousand to tens of thousands, as to how many people are still on the mountain. Rhodes said thousands are believed to still be in danger.

“We don’t believe it’s sustainable to just have, you know, permanent airdrops to this population on the mountain,” Rhodes said. “Some of them have been able to escape but, again, we want to get options in place to move them to a safer place.”

The V-22 Ospreys’ ability to land under harsh conditions would make them useful in any operation to remove the refugees by air. It was not clear how many of the aircraft have been moved to northern Iraq.

They are the first U.S. planes based at airfields in Iraq since the crisis began, according to the Pentagon, signaling a steadily growing American role for an operation that Obama had pledged to keep limited.

Warren would not disclose the location of the airfield, but he said it was protected by Marines and Kurdish troops.

The possibility of a U.S.-led evacuation had grown in recent days as airstrikes have reduced the fighting ability of the militants around Mt. Sinjar, officials said.

U.S. airstrikes in recent days have “slowed if not stopped” the ability of the Islamic State militants to fire mortars and other artillery in the area, Warren said.

A major concern for the U.S. as it contemplates a rescue mission is that, though the militants do not have antiaircraft weapons that would threaten U.S. fighters, they do have weapons that could bring down helicopters and even the propeller-driven V-22, officials said.

There are now 198 U.S. military personnel in northern Iraq, Warren said.

Capitol Hill’s art walk celebrates an anniversary Thursday with a new look and feel for the monthly event dedicated to boosting neighborhood artists and small businesses dedicated to creativity and performance.

Some of the change is straight up branding. With more discussion about the possibilities of a cultural district, the “Blitz Capitol Art Walk” has been simplified to the “Capitol Hill Art Walk” to keep the focus on the neighborhood.

“It’s not like Pioneer Square where it’s consolidated,” says Michelle Hippler of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, the organization that has backed the monthly event for the past five years. “We want people to know they can experience different things on art walk night,” she said.

Some changes go beyond marketing. The chamber plans to introduce a Capitol Hill Arts Hero Award, a a new honor that will celebrate art and artists on the Hill.

DJ 12 HR Notice worked the street for the walk’s third anniversary

“With talks of a cultural district happening, we wanted to start recognizing community members who contribute to the arts on the Hill,” Hippler said. “Artists and art venues are so much a part of our neighborhood, we plan to make it an annual thing,” she said.

Forney sporting an art walk mustache

The first recipient of the inaugural award will go to artist Ellen Forney, an illustrator and Chamber member whose efforts rejuvenated the art walk in 2009. Her work helped expand the art walk to more than 40 venues all over Capitol Hill.

In 2009, Forney worked with the chamber to create the Blitz community inspired art program. Previous to Blitz, the event consisted of a monthly Tuesday walk that had been kind of plodding along without much growth or excitement. The chamber revamped and re-branded the even with a renewed effort to engage the business community of the Hill.

Now it’s time to simplify. Along with the new focus, June’s walk will celebrate five years of the chamber-backed renewal of effort to celebrate the arts around the Hill. Thursday night, there will a starting point at the Cal Anderson Park Shelter House where walkers can meet up at the before party and pick up maps at anytime during the art walk.

Guided tours led by members of the Capitol Hill arts community will also help art walkers to discover the many art venues in the neighborhood.

“I’m excited to highlight work in galleries not only in our neighborhood, but in the immediate surroundings of Photo Center NW, where I work and the hub for photography in our region,” said Rafael Soldi, who will be leading a guided tour.

Blindfold Gallery on East Olive has been a part of the walk since the beginning. This space usually focuses on local artists but this month internationally known L.A. painter Rachid Bouhamidi shares his solo show “Fanfare for the Area Man.” This series of paintings are wildly inventive and intoxicatingly colorful– celebrating life and carrying an air of musicality and playfulness. Rachid will be at the opening, most likely reciting poetry in French or telling stories of his world travels.

Closer to the central Pike/Pine corridor is the veteran favorite Cloud Gallery at Frame Central. Three local artists are featured in this cozy gallery located in the loft above the frame shop. Photographer Nate Gowdy gives us a colorful and diverse collection of images from the nearly 800 LGBTQ events he has attended. Aubry Kae shows off some “Illustrious Characters” from her new series and a few pieces from the 2014 Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. Painter Adream fills out the show with a mix of fabric, threading, beads, and crystals.

Just around the corner on 12th Avenue, Northwest Film Forum, makes its Capitol Hill Art Walk debut with a happy hour + video art program that spans new films from Seattle, Guangzhou, Toronto, Brooklyn, Turku and more. This independent film arts center has been a Pike/Pine staple for more than a decade, and is a proud Capitol Hill hub for independent filmmakers and film lovers from across the region. During Art Walk, you can start off at the Film Forum lobby bar at 6pm (it’s opening night of COMING OUT ALL OVER: QUEER FILM STYLE) and soak in the venue’s industrial chic and fabulous film-loving conversation. Continue in the cinema: the Film Forum will be looping an on-screen video art program (6pm-7:30pm), specially built for Art Walk by guest curator Vera Petukhova, that uncovers a beautiful world of Bart Simpson, emojis, chess games, culture collisions and visual music. Dip in and out of the cinema with your drink and friends before you hit your next Art Walk stop.

Another Art Walk newcomer and the latest happening art and event space on the Hill, 10 Degrees, also breaks the mold by offering video art of dancers. Drop by the 13th and Union space at 7:00PM where they’ll be hosting RADAR, a 45-minute series of short dance films curated by artists in residence Shannon Stewart and Adam Sekuler. Enjoy a cash bar featuring two Capitol Hill favorites: craft booze from OOLA Distillery and treats from Feed Co Catering.

Tours will wrap up around 8 PM. Vermillion will host a 21+ after-party and presentation of the Capitol Hill Arts Hero Award. A live performance by Hibou and How Things Work will follow, along with a raffle. Walkers can enter to win prizes by bringing their stamped art-walk passports.

June 1, 2014: Jani and Bob Bergdahl speak at a press conference at Gowen Field in Boise, Idaho.AP

The parents of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl — the American who was released this weekend after being held for five years by the Taliban — urged their son Sunday to take his time to recover and thanked everybody, from people in their home state of Idaho to American and Qatari officials, for helping return their son.

“Take all of the time you need to recover and decompress,” said his mother, Jani Bergdahl, who has yet to speak directly with her son. “I am so longing to see your face after these five years.”

On Sunday, 18 Taliban members turned over Bergdahl, the only American soldier held prisoner in the war in Afghanistan, to a Navy SEAL team near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border at about 10:30 a.m. ET.

“Bowe I love you. I am your father,” said his dad, Bob Bergdahl, in the couple’s roughly 20-minute press conference in Boise, Idaho, on Sunday afternoon. “Please recognize we are on a mission… I’m so proud about how far you were willing to go to help the Afghan people.”

Their comments came hours after top Obama administration officials praised the diplomatic and military efforts to recover Bergdahl, saying it was an “extraordinary” and “life-saving” mission while disagreeing with the arguments that officials negotiated with terrorists and failed to inform Congress.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and National Security Adviser Susan Rice made their comments roughly 24 hours after Americans learned that Bergdahl was recovered in exchange for the release of five Taliban detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“It was an extraordinary day for America,” Rice told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Rice and Hagel repeatedly disagreed with the argument that U.S. officials negotiated with terrorists to get back Bergdahl.

“You send a message to every Al Qaeda group in the world that there is some value in a hostage that it didn’t have before,” he said.

On the issue of not informing Congress, Hagel said he informed the leaders of the appropriate congressional intelligence and military committees, but defended the administration’s actions by saying officials had to move swiftly.

“This was essential to save the life of Sergeant Bergdahl,” he said.

Rice said Congress, which has cited a 30-day notification rule, had been informed in the past and that the Pentagon got Justice Department approval for the swap before executing the plan.

“There was reason to be concerned [Bergdahl’s] life could have been at risk,” Rice said. “We didn’t have 30 days.”

Hagel and Rice sidestepped questions about whether officials will investigate how and why the 28-year-old Bergdahl apparently wandered off base in Afghanistan before he was captured on June 30, 2009.

“He probably went through hell,” Hagel said from Afghanistan. “The first issue is his health.”

The Taliban detainees were released Saturday after Bergdahl was in American hands and flown by U.S. military plane to Qatar, whose government helped broker the deal and where the former U.S. prisoners will remain in some form of limited confinement.

Bergdahl arrived Sunday morning at Landstuhl Medical Center, in Germany. He has not spoken with his parents yet, the official said.

Hagel said earlier Sunday that the swap was backed by the unanimous consensus of the National Security Council and added that the president has the authority to order such a release under Article 2 of the Constitution.

He also said he was hopeful the exchange could lead to a breakthrough with the Taliban.

The U.S. has long argued that the best way to a successful outcome in Afghanistan included reconciliation with the Taliban insurgents.

U.S. officials said Saturday the deal was reached after a week of intense negotiations mediated by the government of Qatar.

They said efforts to negotiate Bergdahl’s release began in November 2010, that his return has been a top priority since May 2011 and that the opportunity to resume diplomatic efforts emerged several weeks ago.

They are believed to be the top five Taliban leaders at the prison and were selected in 2012 by Taliban leaders as part of initial negotiations.

Bergdahl is thought to have been captured by members of the Haqqani network, which operates in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and has been one of the deadliest threats to U.S. troops in the war.

The network, which the State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2012, claims allegiance to the Afghan Taliban, yet operates with some degree of autonomy.

Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Sean Parker’s career

By any standard, Sean Parker is a very cool donor indeed. And this year, the 34-year-old co-founder of Napster is poised to bring his considerable fortune into the political world with fresh intensity, retaining advisers to bring new focus and sophistication to his political enterprises and preparing to make a significant investment in the 2014 election cycle.

Known primarily as a bad-boy file-sharing guru and defined in the public mind by Justin Timberlake’s frenetic 2010 portrayal in “The Social Network” (“A million dollars isn’t cool,” Timberlake’s character memorably said) Parker has dabbled in the political world for half a decade now.

If the exact direction of Parker’s new push into politics is still taking shape, he is already working actively to build new and stronger political relationships. He has met privately in recent months with some starkly different politicians, huddling with both Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the libertarian-leaning GOP presidential hopeful, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, the populist progressive Democrat. He is eyeing a range of 2014 elections to get involved in and has spoken with former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist about his party-switching comeback bid.

This week, Parker will co-host a San Francisco fundraiser for state Attorney General Kamala Harris, along with Silicon Valley super-elites such as Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Laurene Powell Jobs and uber-investors Ron Conway, Marc Benioff and John Doerr.

On the operational side, Parker has hired Chris Garland, who recently stepped down as chief of staff to California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, to work in a political director role. The former Facebook president is conferring with national strategists about his political engagement. Among his advisers is Addisu Demissie, who managed New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker’s 2013 campaign and now heads up the West Coast office of the Messina Group, the consulting firm founded by President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager.

Parker’s allies say that his political goals remain broadly defined: Unlike other politically-inclined billionaires, such as the conservative Koch brothers and liberal environmentalist Tom Steyer, Parker hopes to avoid a purely partisan role as he ventures more deeply into politics.

Having donated almost exclusively to Democrats up to this point, Parker made a trip to Washington in December for the purpose of meeting quietly with Republican officeholders and strategists around town. He plans to donate to both sides starting this year, associates say, for the first time committing big sums to aid Republicans he views as credible deal-makers in a bitterly divided Congress.

There are specific issues Parker cares about, including immigration reform and investments in urban development and medical research. Like many in the tech world, he shares a set of liberal social values and, one Parker friend said, cares less about his personal tax rate than in making sure government operates efficiently.

At least for now, the Silicon Valley billionaire is primarily interested in fixing what he views as a broken political process, promoting voter engagement and supporting politicians who work across the aisle — all goals far easier to state than to accomplish.

Still, the decision to professionalize the political side of his operation, strategists say, is one Washington should take seriously.

“Sean Parker is the kind of person who, when passionate about an issue, jumps in with both feet,” said Alex Tourk, a Bay Area political strategist who advises Conway, the billionaire venture capitalist and Parker collaborator.

Ben Horowitz, the prominent Silicon Valley investor, shares that assessment of Parker: “He’s all in at a very, very intense level, at more hours of the day than most people are awake.”

“He’s got political views on various topics but his main agenda is sort of making democracy more modern, less corrupt,” Horowitz said.

Parker declined to comment for this story, and allies suggested he is reluctant to detail his plans at such an early stage.

It’s not just through contributions that Parker’s venturing into the world of politics. Last week, he joined Conway and Benioff in backing a new company, Brigade Media, with the general mission of creating tools that will enhance voter education and participation in government.

Operatives who have worked with Parker describe him as something of a wild card — both a news junkie who is earnestly passionate about politics, and an energetic entrepreneur juggling so many projects that it can be hard to keep politics in the foreground.

Melbourne couple’s mad marathon mission

A Melbourne couple, Alan Murray and Janette Murray-Wakelin say a vegan diet is the secret weapon in their recently completed mission to run 15,000 kilometres around Australia.

Transcript

TRACY BOWDEN, PRESENTER: Many Australians have made a New Year’s resolution to be fitter and healthier, but few could imagine taking on the challenge a Melbourne couple set themselves 12 months ago.

Janette Murray-Wakelin and Alan Murray decided to run a marathon every day for a whole year.

With their mission accomplished, the pair is determined to keep spreading the word about healthy living.

I spoke to them a short time ago.

Well, Janette and Alan, you’re home at last after running a marathon a day for a year and a day. How are you feeling?

ALAN MURRAY: We feel just wonderful. It feels great to be home, back in Warendi, now in our home again.

JANETTE MURRAY-WAKELIN: Yes, it’s really very special.

TRACY BOWDEN: Now Janette, why did you set yourselves such an extreme challenge?

JANETTE MURRAY-WAKELIN: Well, I just wanted to share as much information and experience that we’ve had over the last few years with our lives and what the difference has made by making really conscious lifestyle choices, and the best way that I could think of was to spend a year travelling around the country and spreading a really good, positive message and it seemed like if we ran a marathon a day, that would catch a little bit of attention.

TRACY BOWDEN: How difficult was it to get up every morning and hit the road?

ALAN MURRAY: We just set the alarm for 3.50, 10 to 4, and we got up and made ourselves a drink and usually we were out the door before 5 o’clock. There were some days it was difficult when the rain was beating on the roof or the caravan was shaking around in the wind.

JANETTE MURRAY-WAKELIN: Yeah, it was more the weather that put us off, if at all. We never felt like, “Oh, no, we have to do another marathon.” It was more if the weather was feeling a bit bad, then it was hard to get out the door, but once we got out there, it was fine and got into it and sort of knuckled down, it was fine.

TRACY BOWDEN: What were the physical challenges, because there must have been wear and tear without much time to recover each day?

JANETTE MURRAY-WAKELIN: To a certain extent. So long as we got plenty of sleep, we were fine because the food that we eat, which is raw fruit and vegetables, give us the nutrients and the energy that we need and fuels us well, but being able to get enough sleep at night to be able to rejuvenate was a big thing, especially when we’re doing a lot of organising as well as just the running. So, no, it turned out pretty good, I think.

ALAN MURRAY: Mm-hmm, yeah.

TRACY BOWDEN: Alan, what would you say were the major challenges and were some of them things you didn’t expect or anticipate?

ALAN MURRAY: Yeah, we did have challenges, mainly with the weather. We had some 44-degree days going into Canberra and those evenings when we came back to the caravan, one evening it was 49 inside the caravan, so that was a bit extreme. Coming down into Perth near the end of the trip, we had some extremely cold, rainy weather and a couple of times we were maybe a little underdressed and we got chilled to the bone and a couple of times we couldn’t get to the caravan because they couldn’t find a place to stop for us, so we were a bit of unhappy campers by the time we found the caravan.

TRACY BOWDEN: Did you have some days when you thought, “We must be crazy!”?

ALAN MURRAY: Not really, no. We had some days that were tough at the end. I mean, it’s always easy to do the first 20 or 30 k’ – that’s the easy part. But sometimes doing the last 10 or 12 k’, especially when it was hot, that can be quite demanding.

TRACY BOWDEN: Can you tell us a bit more about your diet?

JANETTE MURRAY-WAKELIN: Well, we wanted to have the most nutrients we could possibly get out of the food we were eating, so eating just fresh raw fruit and vegetables gives you that and so we just kind of figured out what we would need to – calorie-wise to be able to have – to run a marathon every day.

TRACY BOWDEN: And what sort of reaction did you get from the people you met along the way?

JANETTE MURRAY-WAKELIN: A really great response. Everybody was so positive. And I think one of the most important things was that they were really inspired by what we were doing and not just about the running, but most people were really, really happy to hear a positive response and to hear a feel-good story that there was a couple of grannies out there just running every day to show how well you can be if you make those right choices.

TRACY BOWDEN: You’re finally home after a good night’s sleep no doubt tonight, back in your own bed. What are you going to do tomorrow?

The Akademik Shokalskiy is trapped in ice in AntarcticaSource: Supplied

A RUSSIAN ship carrying Australian scientists working to redo experiments that were part of Douglas Mawsons expedition has become wedged in Antarctic sea ice.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority is coordinating a search and rescue for the ship after a distress message was sent by satellite to the Falmouth Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in the United Kingdom at 7.20am Tasmanian time.

Three ships with icebreaking capacity are on their way to help the vessel, although it was expected the fastest would take two days to reach the Akademik Shokalskiy.

AMSA spokeswoman Andrea Hayward-Maher said the Australia Antarctic Vessel Aurora Australis, a Chinese ship and a third vessel were on their way to the area, just 100 nautical miles east of the French base Dumont d’Urville.

She said 52 passengers and 22 crew were on board.

“We have to send more than one ship because some might be able to get there faster, and there are different kinds of icebreakers, it’s best to have options available,’’ Ms Andrea Hayward-Maher said.

There were no immediate emergencies facing the passengers, which include members of the “Spirit of Mawson — the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-14’’.

About 12 scientists were believed to be on board carrying out many of the same experiments done during the expedition led by Douglas Mawson.

Two people left the ship to reach Mawson’s Huts at Cape Denison in Antarctica, which had been isolated for several years because of an iceberg blocking the entrance to Commonwealth Bay.

The two-person team was a joint operation between the Mawson’s Huts Foundation and the AAD, which work to conserve Mawson’s Huts.

WASHINGTON — In March 2007, retired FBI agent Robert Levinson flew to Kish Island, an Iranian resort awash with tourists, smugglers and organized crime figures. Days later, after an arranged meeting with an admitted killer, he checked out of his hotel, slipped into a taxi and vanished. For years, the U.S. has publicly described him as a private citizen who traveled to the tiny Persian Gulf island on private business.

But that was just a cover story. An Associated Press investigation reveals that Levinson was working for the CIA. In an extraordinary breach of the most basic CIA rules, a team of analysts — with no authority to run spy operations — paid Levinson to gather intelligence from some of the world’s darkest corners. He vanished while investigating the Iranian government for the U.S.

The CIA was slow to respond to Levinson’s disappearance and spent the first several months denying any involvement. When Congress eventually discovered what happened, one of the biggest scandals in recent CIA history erupted.

Behind closed doors, three veteran analysts were forced out of the agency and seven others were disciplined. The CIA paid Levinson’s family $ 2.5 million to pre-empt a revealing lawsuit, and the agency rewrote its rules restricting how analysts can work with outsiders.

But even after the White House, FBI and State Department officials learned of Levinson’s CIA ties, the official story remained unchanged.

“He’s a private citizen involved in private business in Iran,” the State Department said in 2007, shortly after Levinson’s disappearance.

“Robert Levinson went missing during a business trip to Kish Island, Iran,” the White House said last month.

Details of the unusual disappearance were described in documents obtained or reviewed by the AP, plus interviews over several years with dozens of current and former U.S. and foreign officials close to the search for Levinson. Nearly all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive case.

The AP first confirmed Levinson’s CIA ties in 2010 and continued reporting to uncover more details. It agreed three times to delay publishing the story because the U.S. government said it was pursuing promising leads to get him home.

The AP is reporting the story now because, nearly seven years after his disappearance, those efforts have repeatedly come up empty. The government has not received any sign of life in nearly three years. Top U.S. officials, meanwhile, say his captors almost certainly already know about his CIA association.

There has been no hint of Levinson’s whereabouts since his family received proof-of-life photos and a video in late 2010 and early 2011. That prompted a hopeful burst of diplomacy between the United States and Iran, but as time dragged on, promising leads dried up and the trail went cold.

Some in the U.S. government believe he is dead. But in the absence of evidence either way, the government holds out hope that he is alive and the FBI says it remains committed to bringing him home.

1 of 2. Malik Ellahi (L), political adviser to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Director General Ahmet Uzumcu, talks to Wang Jun, OPCW’s external relations director and team leader, during a news conference in The Hague, October 9, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Toussaint Kluiters/United Photos

By Anthony Deutsch

THE HAGUE | Wed Oct 9, 2013 9:57am EDT

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Syrian officials have been constructive and cooperative in the early stages of the program to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal, the head of the global chemical weapons watchdog said on Wednesday.

Ahmet Uzumcu, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said that experts aimed to visit 20 sites in the coming days and weeks, and could eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons by mid-2014 if they won support from all sides in its civil war.

“The cooperation has been quite constructive and I would say the Syrian authorities have been cooperative,” Uzumcu told a news conference in The Hague, where the OPCW is based.

“If we can ensure cooperation by all parties, and if some temporary ceasefires could be established in order to permit our experts to work in a permissive environment, I think the targets could be reached.”

Syria submitted a declaration of its chemical weapons arsenal to the OPCW last month but the details have not been disclosed. Chemical weapons experts believe Syria has roughly 1,000 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve gas, some of it stored as bulk raw chemicals and some of it already loaded onto missiles, warheads or rockets.

Under a Russian-U.S. deal struck last month, Syria must render useless all production facilities and weapons-filling equipment by November, a process begun over the past week. Its entire chemical arms program must be eliminated by mid-2014.

Most of the chemical agents are believed to be stored in territory under the control of forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad, who has pledged to ensure the safety of dozens of OPCW experts conducting verification activities in a war zone.

The team in Syria, now consisting of 27 field experts, will enter only those areas where inspectors will be safe, said Malik Ellahi, political adviser to director general Uzumcu. “The OPCW will only go and conduct its mission if it is assured security.”

For the field team’s access to areas where hostilities are continuing, the Syrian government and the United Nations will need to negotiate ceasefires with rebel forces.

“We are confident of the ability of our colleagues in the U.N. to work with all groups within Syria to create those conditions,” Malik said. “If we don’t get clearance, we won’t move.”

An OPCW official speaking on condition of anonymity said the chemical sites believed to be now in rebel-held or contested territory were mostly emptied before fighting started there, but they would still need to be inspected at some point to ensure they were no longer being used.

Roughly 100 experts from the chemical weapons regulator will be required to carry out the labor-intensive procedure of either incinerating or chemically neutralizing toxic agents used for warfare.

It is one of the most successful musical comedies in history, but John Landis insists The Blues Brothers is a film that would never be made today.

”Never in a million years,” the Hollywood writer-director said. ”We were making a movie about rhythm and blues and soul music, and the only thing selling in 1979 was ABBA and the Bee Gees.”

Landis – who had some of the biggest hits of the 1970s and ’80s with Animal House, An American Werewolf in London, Trading Places and Coming to America, as well as The Blues Brothers – will be the subject of a major retrospective, and a guest of, the Melbourne Festival next month.

He said modern Hollywood had become so risk-averse that movies that didn’t fit an existing template were unlikely to be made, especially if they cost money (at $ 30 million, The Blues Brothers was one of the most expensive films made to that time).

The studios today were ”all small divisions of huge multinational corporations and they all have what are called ‘green light committees’ that decided which films to approve, he said. ”And you know what happens when committees are involved in creative decisions. It’s very difficult.”

The Blues Brothers starred Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi as a couple of blues-singing ne’er-do-wells on a ”mission from God” to save their local Catholic orphanage by paying its tax bill. Yes, the plot line was illogical, as religious institutions, then and now, don’t pay tax, but the film made more than $ 115 million at the box office, was a hit on video and spawned a series of top-selling albums.

But despite the presence of James Brown, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin on the soundtrack, Landis said it was initially rejected by the label MCA because it thought ”only black people would buy it”. A major cinema chain also refused to run the film in white suburbs for much the same reason.

When the film and its soundtrack became hugely successful, Landis said, everyone asked how he had attracted such an extraordinary array of talent. ”Are you kidding?” he said. ”No problem. The only one who was doing well at that time was Ray Charles – because Ray was doing country music.”